combat rogue MH dagger

Hi all,

My problem is with finding out, what is the DPS difference between MH dagger and fist of the same ilvl (sha touched) in combat spec.
I normaly play assasination and i'm tuned gem/reforge wise into that. My guild now progress on Garalon HC so I use combat spec there wielding daggers.
In my bag I have a fist and I need to know if it's worth to enchant/gem/upgrade it. Mr.robot site puts daggers pretty much on par with the slow speed weapons but on forums all over the internet everyone discourage using dagger as MH in combat spec, so I'am confused.
Any help backed with solid argumentation is welcome

im surprised that more research isn't done when it comes to rogue specs. any how on topic.
combat rogues now use slow weps in both hands. this is due to the proc rate of poisons and focus energy ( the energy proc, can't think of name. ) is now a per minute thing and adjusts to weapon speed. so in turn it allows for harder hitting shadow blades and killing spree.
remember to open with ambush, slice and dice, killing spree, use up all energy then adrenaline rush and shadow blades. ( macro together).
this should give you a nice burst within the first 30 sec. also when AR and KS are close to end of cd wait for KS.

i know you only asked for weps buy thought id help with an opener for you as well.

Not entirely correct. In fact the difference between a slow and fast OH weapon is in favor of a slow by something like 1% and it's all tied to the perfect use of KS. If you cannot use KS on cd for any reason (transitions, immunity or such) you are losing the slow OH advantage and a dagger OH becomes better.

Anyway, we're talking about very small numbers; you can use any offhand without penalty, just take the highest ilvl one.

EDIT: "i don't know the exact difference" was referred to the fact that the exact numbars varies a lot depending on the gear you have. Anyway we're talking about a gain of 2k to 9k dps for a simple weapon switch; that's why you shouldn't use a dagger.

The difference is that the coefficient for all normalized attacks with a dagger is 1.7 and with a non dagger is 2.4. Currently afaik everything but auto attacks is normalized. This is the reason things like hemo and ambush have 2 damage modifiers on them, one for daggers and one for the rest so that the overall result is approximately equal. Also the same reason that the legendary daggers had to have that 40% bonus to SS and RvS damage.

With the nerf to how bf worked on that fight, unless you are cleaving 100% of the time or close to it, I don't know if combat would be better without a non dagger MH.

That said, normalization has nothing to do with it. The end result would be the same even if NO combat rogue abilities were normalized. If they are unnormalized the coefficient of 1.7 or 2.5 would simply be replaced with the speed of the weapon and a dagger would STILL have a smaller coefficient.

Backstab and mutilate are designed with daggers--which is why they have such high weapon damage modifiers. This speed difference is why hemo and ambush have different weapon damage modifiers based on weapon type.

No, but shadow blades is new tech that allows autoattacks to be replaced with yellow attacks. You can't "normalize" autoattacks anyway. All "normalization" means is to replace the weapon speed multiplier on the weapon attack with a lower one that is fixed to weapon type. It was a shortcut to use this calculation method for yellow attacks to begin with, but white attacks actually pay for that multiplier by incurring a delay. If you were to "normalize" white attacks or shadow blades, then your best dagger would be the fastest one you could find, because you'd be treated as if you were 1.7 even if you were 1.8 or 1.4, so you obviously would want to swing as fast as possible. Your best sword would be the fastest one of those you could find, and for the same reason- you wouldn't want your weapon swing timer to be 2.6 if you were only getting credit f or 2.4.

OP is on heroic Garalon. It's actually possible that double daggers for combat outperforms whatever else he has. I'm pretty sure the white damage and agi would make up for the sinister/revealing damage if his best combat weapon was from say, dragonsoul. I'm also pretty sure he'll help his raid more as combat than if he were to go mutilate.

OP should do whatever necessary to get a 450 or 463 combat mainhand, pronto. There's one at exalted Klaxxi, there's one lying around the dreadwastes at 450 I think, and of course you can run the dungeon each day- it's the one you start in the bug hive, fight a boss, run upstairs, and then are helping pandas defend against a tower defense boss. That guy drops a 463 sword that will be an upgrade over almost every dagger in game for combat mainhand.

No, but shadow blades is new tech that allows autoattacks to be replaced with yellow attacks. You can't "normalize" autoattacks anyway. All "normalization" means is to replace the weapon speed multiplier on the weapon attack with a lower one that is fixed to weapon type. It was a shortcut to use this calculation method for yellow attacks to begin with, but white attacks actually pay for that multiplier by incurring a delay. If you were to "normalize" white attacks or shadow blades, then your best dagger would be the fastest one you could find, because you'd be treated as if you were 1.7 even if you were 1.8 or 1.4, so you obviously would want to swing as fast as possible. Your best sword would be the fastest one of those you could find, and for the same reason- you wouldn't want your weapon swing timer to be 2.6 if you were only getting credit f or 2.4.

OP is on heroic Garalon. It's actually possible that double daggers for combat outperforms whatever else he has. I'm pretty sure the white damage and agi would make up for the sinister/revealing damage if his best combat weapon was from say, dragonsoul. I'm also pretty sure he'll help his raid more as combat than if he were to go mutilate.

OP should do whatever necessary to get a 450 or 463 combat mainhand, pronto. There's one at exalted Klaxxi, there's one lying around the dreadwastes at 450 I think, and of course you can run the dungeon each day- it's the one you start in the bug hive, fight a boss, run upstairs, and then are helping pandas defend against a tower defense boss. That guy drops a 463 sword that will be an upgrade over almost every dagger in game for combat mainhand.

He states he has a sha touched fist and dagger in his first post. Thus as combat he should be using the Sha touched fist in MH and the dagger in off if he doesnt have another fist to cleave with. I wont go into the reasons why as they've been stated plenty of times before and the thread got muddled down with excess theory craft.

Long story short, If you have equal ilvl weapons as combat always use a slow in the MH, offhand take your pick the difference is minimal.

That said, normalization has nothing to do with it. The end result would be the same even if NO combat rogue abilities were normalized. If they are unnormalized the coefficient of 1.7 or 2.5 would simply be replaced with the speed of the weapon and a dagger would STILL have a smaller coefficient.

Backstab and mutilate are designed with daggers--which is why they have such high weapon damage modifiers. This speed difference is why hemo and ambush have different weapon damage modifiers based on weapon type.

No, the normalization absolutely matters. The question here is related to weapon type. If they were not normalized then the weapon type would be completely irrelevant and if you had a sword faster than your dagger, the dagger would be the superior mh choice(assuming other things equal). My bad about RvS I guess, could have sworn it was.

SB probably isn't because its just auto attack replacement and normalizing something like that is pointless as over an infinite time horizon (so that you don't stop time clipping an attack) weapon speed doesn't matter. The point of normalization was to mitigate the ridiculous advantage of having a slow weapon speed.

Edit: I do agree what you are saying is true though. If you take away normalization, the end result given current tier weapons shouldn't change. But it ceases to be a question about "daggers" which the OP is posing and instead a question about weapon speed and the specific type of weapon is irrelevant.

No, the normalization absolutely matters. The question here is related to weapon type. If they were not normalized then the weapon type would be completely irrelevant and if you had a sword faster than your dagger, the dagger would be the superior mh choice(assuming other things equal). My bad about RvS I guess, could have sworn it was.

SB probably isn't because its just auto attack replacement and normalizing something like that is pointless as over an infinite time horizon (so that you don't stop time clipping an attack) weapon speed doesn't matter. The point of normalization was to mitigate the ridiculous advantage of having a slow weapon speed.

Edit: I do agree what you are saying is true though. If you take away normalization, the end result given current tier weapons shouldn't change. But it ceases to be a question about "daggers" which the OP is posing and instead a question about weapon speed and the specific type of weapon is irrelevant.

No. Normalization DOES NOT MATTER.

Normalization existed so that weapon speed mattered less for special attacks. Back before normalization existed sinister strike and such used the weapon speed as the attack power modifier. This made the barman shanker (a BRD blue dagger) better than epics many item levels higher simply because it was a 2.00 speed and would use a 2.00 AP coefficient with all abilities, making it better than a much higher dps but faster weapon. Today this is completely irrelevant since all daggers are 1.8 speed and all slow weapons are 2.6 speed.

If sinister strike was not normalized comparing a dagger to a non-dagger would have the same effect as now. Instead of being a 2.5 vs 1.7 coefficient, it would be 2.6 vs 1.8. same result.

Normalization was implemented such that a different weapon speed of a weapon OF THE SAME TYPE would yield similar instant attack damage. If a 2.8 speed weapon existed and normalization didn't, it would be a BiS main weapon even over probably a couple tiers worth of item levels.

Normalization existed so that weapon speed mattered less for special attacks. Back before normalization existed sinister strike and such used the weapon speed as the attack power modifier. This made the barman shanker (a BRD blue dagger) better than epics many item levels higher simply because it was a 2.00 speed and would use a 2.00 AP coefficient with all abilities, making it better than a much higher dps but faster weapon. Today this is completely irrelevant since all daggers are 1.8 speed and all slow weapons are 2.6 speed.

If sinister strike was not normalized comparing a dagger to a non-dagger would have the same effect as now. Instead of being a 2.5 vs 1.7 coefficient, it would be 2.6 vs 1.8. same result.

Normalization was implemented such that a different weapon speed of a weapon OF THE SAME TYPE would yield similar instant attack damage. If a 2.8 speed weapon existed and normalization didn't, it would be a BiS main weapon even over probably a couple tiers worth of item levels.

First off, get your numbers right. Its 1.7 for daggers and 2.4 for non daggers. And then yes normalization DOES MATTER.

Spare me the crappy history lesson. Thats exactly what I said. Normalization was added to minimize the ridiculous advantage of slower weapons (such as the barman shanker you mentioned).

Why does normalization matter? Its really damn simple... what value are you looking to in order to determine the difference? The normalization coefficient. That is the deciding factor. Weapon speed is absolutely irrelevant to any normalized attack or any form of auto attack. So assuming you are right about RvS, theres a whole 1 attack that you use something like every 20 seconds. What you really care about when its dagger versus non dagger is the normalization coefficient which is determined entirely by weapon type.

And btw no it wouldn't have the exact same effect. The result in terms of optimal items of the same weapon dps would be unchanged but the degree in which they compare is NOT the same. If you go by coefficients, you get an extra ~41% going to a non dagger. If you go by speed you would get an extra ~44%. So agian, normalization DOES MATTER. If you ignore it and just go by speed, you are undervaluing the daggers.

edit: Btw there are still swords that aren't 2.6, not sure on the daggers. Not that there are any we would actually want to be using for raids, but they do exist.

Since sinister strike is normalized, you lose ~29.9% damage by using a dagger.
If sinister strike were not normalized you'd lose ~30.6% damage by using a dagger.

Normalization is NOT why you use a nondagger. Arguing that the 41% to 44% increase because of the normalization coefficient matters is like arguing that 2WTC was an insignificant building because 1WTC was 6 feet taller.

You're falling into the trap of trying to compare the difference between dagger & nondagger when normalized to the difference between a dagger and nondagger when not normalized. The difference of those differences has been irrelevent since level 80 (the last time you had dagger-like speeds in nondagger weapons). The OP is not talking about level 80 content. (S)he is talking about level 90 content. At level 90, normalization doesn't matter when it comes to selecting a dagger vs a nondagger.

Sinister strike is either normalized or it's not, you either compare one weapon's normalized damage to the other weapon's normalized damage or you compare 1 unnormalized to the other unnormalized. The difference between those two differences doesn't matter. At all. The outcome is the same in either case.

All nondaggers are 2.6 at level 90 (caster weapons excepted for obvious reasons). There ARE 1.7 speed daggers for leveling in mists though. The random dagger you get from scenario bags happens to be a 1.7 as well.

Normalization has a role into the choosing of a weapon for combat - but it's not the main cause for choosing a sowrd/fist/axe/mace over a dagger.

Normalization appeared in Vanilla because of only one thing: the Barman Shanker. This was a blue dagger with 2.00 speed coming from the grim Guzzler boss - due to it's slow speed for a dagger, the multipliers for istant attacks were going crazy and when actually combat backstab spec was viable this was near BiS only due to weapon speed; it was better than even MC daggers.
Hence, normalization appeared because high lvl epics (for the time) were worse than that dagger only due to the weapon speed.

Time passed, combat backstab became worse and worse basically due to SS being much more convenient in terms of DPE and CP generation compared to BS. Also, due to new mechanic design, all weapons started to have nearly the same weapons speed (2.6 to 2.8 for onehanders, 1.4 to 1.8 for daggers and offhand weapons). This was when in TBC till existed fast OH weapons like swords etc.

Fast forward to MoP: now all wepons have the same speed. Onehanders 2.6 and daggers 1.8 (with some exceptions ofc). Also, backstb is Sub only, so Combat can use only SS as main CP builder. Due to this, A slow MH is ALWAYS a dps increase over a dagger (maybe if you have a 2/3 tiers better dagger, but it's highly unlikely. Normalization coefficients are still lower than actual weapon speed (2.4 and 1.7) but it will still be the same if they took the actual weapon speeds since they are normalized baseline (with the obvious dps difference).
TL;DR: normalization is in game for different reasons; it had a role on this a long time ago, but with the new system it's somethign implied baseline by the new weapons.